


Rare and never simple

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Setting, Fluff, M/M, Modern AU, Temporary Character Death, happy end, just. general confusion about reality, perceived character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 16:45:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13252383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “Ben,” he says. “Ben Kenobi.”It takes Anakin longer than it should to realize it’s the man’s name.Ben.It’s a nice name, if a little more plain than he would have imagined. Not that it matters – he would be dangerously happy to call Ben anything he asked.





	Rare and never simple

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Hold on to your hats, because I have A Lot to say about this. None of it is very relevant or interesting, probably, but I’m still going to say it.
> 
> 1) Only actually important message: OHMYGOSH HAPPY (very Very belated) BIRTHDAY M/DONKERROOD/COOL PERSON. 
> 
> 2) Disclaimer, for which you should imagine me apologetically waving my hands above my head: I don’t actually know Star Wars! I have no idea what I’m doing! Probably don’t read this for deep connections to canon because I’ve only seen most of the movies once two years ago! 
> 
> 3) Which isn’t to say that I didn’t try, because I did. I’m just saying that I have no way to know if it ended up making sense or not. I also took some liberties with the force, probably.
> 
> 4) This is very loosely based on/inspired by an episode of Star Trek: DS9 (4x19, Hard Time), which might be a Very Serious breach of fandom etiquette considering the imagined Wars vs Trek feud, so don’t read it if you’re really super anti Star Trek, I guess. (Not that Star Trek features into this in any way whatsoever, but still, you’ve been warned.)
> 
> 5) I don’t know if anything like this has been done before in Star Wars or Obikin fandom, because I have read very little Star Wars fic and none for Obikin whatsoever, so I apologize if it has.
> 
> 6) In that vein, please let me know if I did anything wrong or broke any etiquette in tagging this! Also please tell me if I just generally forgot to tag something important and I’ll definitely fix it.
> 
> 7) This is REALLY FUCKING LONG for my AO3 standards. My last contribution to this fandom (also a birthday fic for coincidentally the same person) was utter crack, so I tried for something a little different this time, and then it just… kept growing. And growing. And, oh god, growing. Just like these author’s notes, because I have a problem, but at least that’s not new.
> 
> 8) You do not want to know how many hours of sleep I sacrificed for this. I'm an idiot with a really, really bad sleeping schedule, as exemplified by the fact I'm posting this at 6:36 AM, and that's not after waking up early.
> 
> 9) I hope the length of this justifies the length of the incubation period a tiny little bit. This is by far the most involved, plotty and complicated fic I’ve ever posted to AO3 for any fandom, and also the longest, and also the one with the scariest tags (and it’s STAR WARS, while I still haven’t written ANY Trek fic, and I’m not sure how this happened but I’m blaming you, M (but not really because I take full responsibility for what I do or do not write but also yes really because LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO and now I’m quoting T-Swift lyrics, what is happening)).
> 
> 10) These comments were mostly written between four and seven AM without any sleep, which explains the rambling, incoherent nature, I hope.
> 
> 11) “The truth is rare and never simple” is a quote by Oscar Wilde, which seemed appropriate as a title because he was very gay and so is this fic.
> 
> 12) Shout out to M and her three months of patience, and happy slightly more than 22 1/4 years on this earth!!! <3 I hope you don’t hate it, or that if you do, at least some of the affection I put into this filters through.

“You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories.”  
~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

-

The first time they meet is next to the condiments section in Anakin’s local grocery store. He’s holding a bottle of hot sauce that is, according to its packaging, _SO SPICY IT’LL MELT YOUR SKIN OFF_. He is in the middle of wondering which overworked marketing strategist thought this would make their product sound appealing and if there’s anything less enticing than the promise of burnt human flesh, when his life changes drastically and forever.

Somebody reaches across him to get to the ketchup, and he takes an accommodating step back. He looks up.

He doesn’t drop the bottle of hot sauce, but it’s a damn near thing.

Next to him is the most beautiful person he has ever seen. The man has a beard and hair long enough that it reaches his ears and he’s dressed like he belongs at a farmer’s market, which should probably turn Anakin off, but it does not in the slightest. The man’s eyes are kind and blue and they sparkle. Anakin wants to hurl himself off a cliff for thinking such things, but it’s _true_. The worst of all, however, is that looks aren’t even the reason Anakin has difficulty looking anywhere else than this stranger’s face. He struggles for something to say.

“Do I know you?” he eventually tries. It’s awful. It sounds like the worst kind of pickup line, but the man doesn’t call him on it.

He just shakes his head, a faint smile playing around his lips, the same wondrous amazement in his expression that is throwing Anakin for a loop. It’s a feeling like a heartbeat, but not quite. It’s a hum, something living and alien but oh so familiar, even though he can’t recall ever having experienced anything like it. He feels like it should scare him. It doesn’t.

“It’s just…” Anakin tries anew, but again words fail him. He trails off and remembers just in time not to let his mouth hang open and openly _gape_ at the person in front of him. It’s reassuring to realize he still has some boundaries, at least.

“I don’t know how,” the man starts slowly, “but I seem to know what you mean. Is that silly?”

If Anakin hadn’t been entranced already, the British accent would have done it. He laughs, and then stops abruptly, afraid the man will assume he’s being laughed at. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t feel that way.”

“No, it really doesn’t.”

Anakin wants to ask him to keep talking. He wants to ask him what his favorite color is and if he’s more of a cat or a dog person and where he stands in the pineapple on pizza debate and who’s his favorite Harry Potter character. He wants to ask if he has any brothers or sisters and if they get along and if he has pets and how he chose their names and how many pictures he has of them on his phone. He wants to ask for his phone number. He wants to know what he does for a living and if it’s what he’s always wanted to do or if he’d imagined a different life for himself when he was growing up, and if he’s happy and if he ever feels lonely and where he lives and if he likes living there and if Anakin could maybe come visit him sometime, just to see what home looks like for a stranger who somehow, impossibly but sharply, reminds Anakin of that word. _Home._

Anakin doesn’t ask him any of these things, because that would be creepy and invasive. 

But he wants to. Oh, he wants to.

In the end, it’s the man who first speaks again. He looks down at his sparsely filled shopping cart. This breaks their oddly long eye contact which had, even more oddly, not felt odd in the slightest when it was going on. “I should get home before my veggie burgers thaw. It was nice meeting you.”

He smiles, so it doesn’t feel like as much of a dismissal as it could have been, and then he pushes his cart down the aisle and is gone. Anakin remains where he is for a moment, frozen like the burgers probably won’t be for much longer.

He doesn’t buy the hot sauce. His gut feeling says it’s something to be avoided.

-

The second time they meet is on the exact same day in the parking lot of the exact same grocery store about fifteen minutes later. When he awakes from his stupor, Anakin finishes his shopping with minimal attention to what he pulls from the shelves. It’s just starting to rain when he leaves the store. He’s almost clear of the parking lot as one of the few pedestrians, when someone lightly taps him on the shoulder. He startles and turns around, and is surprised again.

“I’m sorry,” the man starts. It was probably meant to be followed by something, but Anakin will never know, because he cuts him off.

“It’s you!” he says, stupidly. Something about this man seems to make it impossible for him to actually use the brain power he knows he possess, normally. “I was just thinking about you.” 

The man does not look completely repulsed. Quite the opposite, for some reason: he smiles, and extends his right hand. “Ben,” he says. “Ben Kenobi.”

It takes Anakin longer than it should to realize it’s the man’s name.

Ben. 

It’s a nice name, if a little more plain than he would have imagined. Not that it matters – he would be dangerously happy to call Ben anything he asked.

Ben’s hand is still hovering between them, so Anakin hurries to shift his heavy reusable shopping bag from his right hand to his left, so he can answer the offered greeting properly. “Anakin. Skywalker! Anakin Skywalker.” 

Ben’s grip is firm and his hand is warm and dry, despite the cold weather and the lonely raindrops still painting dark grey polka dots on the pavement. Anakin remembers to let go after the appropriate amount of time and no longer, but it’s one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do.

“I’m sorry if this is weird,” Ben says, and there he goes again, apologizing.

“It’s not!” Anakin isn’t sure what Ben is referring to, but it doesn’t even matter.

Ben smiles. “It’s just that I saw you walking and wondered, well, do you want a ride? My car is right there.”

Anakin looks in the direction Ben gestures and there’s a small blue _something_ , of a make and model Anakin can’t discern, which is impressive in and of itself. Its backdoor is wide open and there is a shopping bag in the trunk. It’s a terrible car, and that’s by far not the only reason to say no to an offer from a complete stranger, but his own bag is heavy and the man doesn’t look like a serial killer and Anakin is an idiot, so he nods before consciously choosing to do so. “That would be pretty great, actually,” he hears himself say.

He follows Ben to the car and Ben’s hand briefly touches his when Ben takes his bag from him to put in the trunk next to the other one. Anakin in still thinking about it when he is safely seated in the passenger’s seat. Ben waits patiently until Anakin has finished fumbling with his seatbelt before he starts the car. If he _is_ a serial killer, at least he’s one who cares about road safety.

And here’s the thing: Anakin expects some awkwardness. He is prepared for there to be a silence of some kind that he doesn’t know how to fill, but there isn’t. Ben asks where he lives while they’re leaving the parking lot, just when the rain is starting to pick up. Anakin says his building is two blocks away and gives directions when necessary, and that’s it, and it’s fine, somehow. Anakin lets the sounds of the engine and the rain on the roof wash over him and touches the spot on his hand where it had bumped into Ben’s and he feels… at peace.

It’s a decidedly strange sensation to have while sitting in the car of a person he met twenty minutes ago.

“It’s right here,” Anakin says, when they’re approaching his flat. It feels like it’s far, far too soon to say goodbye again, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. “Thanks for the ride,” he says. “It was cool of you to offer.”

Ben has pulled over at the side of the road. There are barely any cars here, and Anakin thanks whatever deity is listening, because it means there is no hurry for him to get out and let Ben go so he doesn’t block traffic. “You’re welcome,” Ben says, and sounds like he means it, which strikes Anakin as ridiculously kind. Anakin didn’t even think to ask if this was on Ben’s way or if he drove here just to drop Anakin off at home. “I don’t think anybody likes having to walk home in the rain, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to do my good deed for the day.”

A good deed. Anakin wonders if that’s all it was. He can’t kid himself into not being disappointed.

On the other hand, Ben had said he experienced the same feeling of familiarity in the store. Anakin licks his lips and very deliberately turns to Ben. He breathes in. “Hey, uh. Do you want to come in for some coffee?” He remembers how English Ben clearly is, and adds: “Or tea. I have tea too.” It’s true, even if he’d have to dig pretty deep to get at it.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ben says.

Anakin breathes out. He fights against the irrational feeling of rejection. He doesn’t know this man – what did he expect?

“I need to get my burgers back in a freezer,” Ben continues, oblivious to Anakin’s inner turmoil. “And I have a case to prepare – I’m an environmental lawyer. But I’d like to give you my number, if you want.”

Anakin doesn’t so much breathe in this time, as gasp. It’s embarrassing and he hopes Ben hasn’t noticed. “Yes! I’d love that!” 

He struggles to get his phone out of his pocket while sitting down, but it doesn’t even matter, because a minute later he gets to put it back with a brand new name added to his contacts.

As soon as he’s closed his front door behind him, he texts Ben, thanking him again. He doesn’t expect a quick response, but he’s still putting away groceries (and whistling to himself) when his phone vibrates so loudly it almost dances off the edge of the countertop. The message reads _You’re still welcome! :)_

Anakin needs to take a moment to collect himself after reading it. He’s suddenly glad for his shitty, overpriced apartment, because at least he doesn’t have any roommates to see how determined the corners of his mouth suddenly are to reach his ears. 

-

They arrange to get coffee three days later. Ben wears a knit beige sweater and it makes Anakin question everything he knows about the world, because it shouldn’t look good, but it _does_.

“So,” Ben begins, once they’ve settled at a table in the corner of the small independent coffee shop Ben suggested. Anakin’s never been there, but it looks like a place Ben frequents, which makes Anakin want to renounce his terrible instant coffee habits and spend a lot of money he doesn’t have just to become a regular and maybe bump into Ben someday. “There’s something I have to ask.”

This yanks Anakin out of his coffeeshop meet cute daydreams and into a mental spiral downwards. “What is it?” he asks, before he can freeze up completely. He shouldn’t be this worried – they’ve been here all of five minutes and all they’ve done is order their drinks. There’s been literally no time for him to do anything wrong. There should be nothing Ben can say to shock him too much.

Ben looks at him, then breaks eye contact to look down at his organic, locally grown green tea. “I don’t know how to put this delicately, so I’ll just say it: I have no idea if this is a date or not.”

And, oh boy, was Anakin wrong.

His mouth drops open, so he closes it. He puts his hands in his lap and then on top of the table again. Ben looks at him, something nervous playing in his eyes, and Anakin is helpless to do anything but stare back. “I don’t know either?” he says, his voice going up enough at the end to make it into a question. Ben’s eyes drop from his again and Anakin has the distinct impression it’s a way to shield some reaction from him, so he straightens his spine and steels his nerves, and takes the jump. “I do know I’d like it to be.”

Ben’s head snaps up. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Anakin says, heart beating in his throat.

“That’s good. That’s really good.”

It’s Anakin’s turn to ask, “Yes?”

“Yes,” Ben says, so decisively he manages to calm every last shred of doubt Anakin had that they’re not on the same page. Ben really is a creature of magic.

Anakin is no less convinced of this at the end of the afternoon, when they dawdle outside of the coffee shop, both realizing their time together has come to an end, but neither of them wanting to go. It’s Ben who eventually announces he really needs to head home, but then he doesn’t actually walk away, but instead moves closer and kisses Anakin right on the mouth. It’s sweet and despite the beard very soft and for a brief, perfect moment, Anakin wants for absolutely nothing, except _more_ of this.

-

He gets it two days later during their second date. This time they go for dinner at the fanciest Chinese place Anakin knows and he insists on paying and Ben lets him and then kisses the living daylights out of him right outside on the street. He still tastes like chocolate and cherries from dessert and Anakin does his very best to lick every last trace of it from his mouth.

-

They have a third date, and a fourth date, and then a fifth. Life suddenly seems almost too good to be true, and then there’s a sixth date which ends with considerably less clothes on both of them than the previous five. Anakin runs a hand over his sensitive face and chest and realizes he should probably google what to do about beard burn, but it’s a fleeting thought, soon driven away by the image of Ben in his afterglow, still out of breath and looking absolutely ravished. His hair is a mess, there are red marks on his neck and his lips are puffy. He tugs on Anakin’s arm until Anakin settles half on top of him, and then he closes his eyes and still looks debauched, but also so content and happy Anakin thinks he could cry. 

He doesn’t. He swallows down the three words on the tip of his tongue, finds a comfortable way to rest his head on Ben’s shoulder, and allows himself to melt into him.

-

They’ve only been dating for just over a month and a half when Anakin’s landlord leaves a letter under his door. “What’s wrong?” Ben asks, as soon as Anakin picks up his phone. Apparently his last text was a little more panicky than he was trying to make it sound, which is no surprise, because he is still halfway down the road towards a full panic attack.

“I’m being kicked out of my apartment,” he says, the hand he isn’t using to hold the phone literally in his hair. The letter is on his kitchen-coffee-table-desk, and he’s sitting on one of his two chairs, staring the paper down like it’s a hungry escaped zoo animal. He is not winning. “I just got a letter and they want me out by next week and how am I going to find a place to live by next week? That’s impossible! I’m a student and I can’t afford shit, and now I’m going to be a homeless student because these assholes think they can just -”

“Anakin.” Ben’s voice cuts through Anakin’s ever growing anxiety. “You’re not going to be homeless. You can stay at my place as long as you need while you figure something out.”

Somehow, out of all the things that have happened that day, this is what shocks Anakin the most. “Really?”

“Of course,” Ben says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I care about you and I’m here for you. How long have you been making yourself miserable over this? Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

“I.” Anakin squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden stinging behind them. “I didn’t think to.”

There’s a long silence on the other end of the line. Anakin thinks this is it, now he’s gone and done it, Ben will surely retract his offer, wizen up and find someone more well-adjusted and emotionally available than him. “Oh, Anakin,” Ben eventually says, softly. It’s almost a sigh, and it doesn’t sound angry at all, nor like he’s given up on Anakin. It sounds like he cares far too much. “I meant what I said. You don’t have to do this on your own. I’m here, no matter what.”

They’ve never actually said it – _it_ , that thing couples say to each other and romantic comedies often build up into a huge deal – and Anakin assumes it would still be too early, even if they’re now temporarily moving in together out of necessity. He feels it, though, and he thinks maybe Ben does to. “No matter what” comes dangerously close to other promises.

He still doesn’t say it, because it’s not the right moment and he definitely doesn’t want to do it over the phone for the first time, but he thinks it, very loudly. He slumps over the table, letting his forehead drop to the cool wood. “ _Thank you_ ,” he says, emphatically, hoping he conveys a deeper meaning.

“Can I come over?” Ben asks, like that’s a question which has multiple possible answers.

That night, they squeeze into Anakin’s small single bed together, now surrounded by a few carton boxes Ben brought over that they’ve already started to fill with some of Anakin’s sparse possessions.

-

They haven’t even known each other for that long, but it’s already as if he can’t remember anything from before he met Ben, as if that time never existed.

-

The move is surprisingly uncomplicated. Ben’s apartment has only one bedroom but is large enough for two, it’s close by where Anakin already lived, and he’d been staying there about one in three nights anyway. Anakin moves his furniture into a garage box and that’s it, his old place is empty. His boxes of smaller possessions are the only problem, taking up too much space in Ben’s living room, but Ben urges him to empty two and spread the stuff inside around the place however he likes, and the other two are gradually integrated into the room as small side tables.

“How’s the house hunting going?” Ben asks after the first week, chewing on some oatmeal for breakfast. Anakin is both charmed and appalled by how healthy all of Ben’s food is.

“House would be a fine thing. It’s more like shoebox hunting, really,” he says, and makes Ben snort into his oatmeal. He counts it as a win.

When Ben asks the same question after the second week, he’s still casual about it. Anakin’s feet are in his lap while he’s doing a crossword puzzle (their age difference is never more apparent than in these moments) and Anakin is working on a uni assignment on his laptop. There is no trace of judgement or impatience in Ben’s tone or demeanor, however well Anakin looks for it, but Anakin is still starting to feel guilty for overstaying his welcome. “Not so good,” he admits, infusing it with as much of an apology as he can squeeze in three words without apologizing outright, because he knows by now that Ben would tell him it isn’t necessary.

The third week, when Ben finally asks, Anakin has been thinking about how to answer for two full days. “I still haven’t found anything. I’m sorry. You must be wanting your place back to yourself, but it’s really hard to find room that’s affordable, somewhere in the area and also available on short notice.”

Ben looks almost surprised at this sudden flow of words. He stops chopping up bell peppers at the kitchen counter and turns to Anakin, who’s at the table, looking at housing listings right that second, even though it’s not doing much good and he’s seen everything on offer three times already. 

“Hey, don’t worry,” Ben says. “I only ask because I think I’d need a while to get used to the thought of you leaving. I like having you here all the time, and I like that it’s never really quiet anymore because you’re always typing something, and I even got used to that box next to the sofa as a place to put my glass.”

“Oh,” Anakin manages, weakly.

“Actually, I’ve been thinking.” Ben doesn’t move from where he is, all the way on the other end of the kitchen, but he does put the knife he’d still been holding down in the sink and turns to Anakin fully, his back to the counter. His expression is serious, but not in a way that scares Anakin, just in a way that makes his heart trip, because he thinks he can guess at what’s coming. “It’s perfectly okay if you want your own four walls, of course, but you don’t _have_ to keep looking. You could move in permanently.”

Ben looks hopeful. Anakin only sees it because he knows Ben, inside and out, despite the relatively short time they’ve been together. Ben is actively trying to repress his hope, most likely because he wants to avoid influencing Anakin.

Ben is an idiot sometimes, and it’s the first time Anakin realizes this, and it delights him because he, too, is an idiot, just far more of the time.

Like right then, for example.

“I love you,” he blurts.

There’s a rather long silence as they stare at each other, with no telling who is more surprised by this turn of events. Ben half laughs. “Is that a yes?”

Anakin almost topples his chair when he jumps up. It falls back on four legs with a thump at about the same moment as when Anakin crashes into Ben, unintentionally but not undesirably pushing him up against the counter.

“I love you t-” Ben tries to say, still grinning, but Anakin swallows the words and spends the next good while alternately biting and sucking on Ben’s lips. At some point they get frantic enough to forget the beginnings of dinner are on the counter, and they both break down into helpless giggles when they realize Anakin successfully hoisted Ben up onto the counter and into a mess of half cut bell peppers.

It’s later, when they’ve relocated to the bed and are no longer impatient and burning up, just languid and satisfied, that Ben picks up the thread of conversation like it hadn’t been interrupted by a lot of other words and some very indecent pleas. “I do, though,” he says, carding a hand through Anakin’s hair. Anakin has gone shamelessly boneless, letting himself soak up the moment.

“Hm?”

“I love you too.”

Anakin’s hold on Ben’s chest tightens as something in his own ribcage does. “I’m glad.”

“I should ask you to move in permanently more often,” Ben quips, and it loosens everything in Anakin. It feels like he falls asleep still half chuckling.

-

He has a nightmare. He doesn’t remember what it’s about or even why it was so terrifying, but he wakes up in a cold sweat.

He turns over, and there’s Ben, snoring ever so slightly. He doesn’t fall back asleep for a long while, but his heart rate returns to normal faster than it ever has after one of his bad dreams.

-

They’ve been together two years, living together for almost as long, when Anakin decides that this is it, for him. This is all he wants and all he wants the rest of his life to be, this comfortable symbiosis with a man he still can’t quite believe is real and really interested in him. They fit together perfectly and it still feels like they’re in their honeymoon stage even after all this time. It’s magical, like some force binds them together. He never believed in fate before he met Ben. He wants to keep it this way, capture this and set it in stone, or writing, at least. He wants something tangible to both remind himself of what they have and show the world that it’s for real. Something like a ring, perhaps.

They could continue their honeymoon period on an actual honeymoon. It’s a thought that turns his blood to champagne.

The whole thing is harder to keep from Ben than he thought it would be. It’s not even because he has to choose and pay for the rings without making Ben suspicious, because that’s doable, if a little complicated. No, the real problem turns out to be that Ben will sometimes do something small and stupid – burn his toast and shake his head at himself, or pour salt instead of sugar in his tea because he’s too distracted frowning sadly at the article he’s reading about the destruction of the rainforest. It can be anything, just something tiny, and Anakin will feel like he just swallowed some kind of pure essence of happiness which should be highly illegal and sits in his stomach like it’s a piece of the sun, light and warm and incredibly hot and a little scary, but also familiar, because he sees his sun every day, because he lives with him. It makes life difficult. It’s nearly impossible to feel this way and _not_ blurt out the question that’s been on his mind for weeks now.

He finally receives the phone call to tell him he can pick up his order on a Tuesday. He drops everything (including his laptop, very nearly) and rushes out of the door. He’s very fortunate Ben isn’t home that afternoon, because he’s pretty sure he would have answered any questions with loud, incoherent screaming about secrets and love and needing to urgently buy pears, or something else that makes equally as little sense.

And then he has them. It feels like they’re burning a hole in his pocket when Ben comes home that day, but he has to act normal, or as close of an approximation to normal as he can. In all the excitement about the rings and in between concocting elaborate scenarios about how good married life would be and shivering at the thought of hearing Ben call him his husband, he never got around to thinking about how he was going to clue Ben in on everything that’s been going on in his mind. He’s thrown for a loop. He panics a little and then starts googling the most expensive restaurants in the area, and after a quick look at their bank account, romantic ways to propose that don’t involve taking out a loan on a house they don’t own.

That’s how his Wednesday and Thursday play out. Thursday evening, Ben comes home with a bottle of wine one of his clients gave him for a win on a case. He’s on the floor in between the coffee table and the sofa, for ease of access while pouring two glasses, and he isn’t looking at Anakin but Anakin can see him, from his own position on the sofa. He can see Ben’s slight frown of concentration and his beard that needs a trim and his shoulders, a little slumped because he’s at home and relaxed. Ben was tired but satisfied when he came home, and thrilled someone had been so thoughtful to buy a cheap bottle of shitty corner store wine. Anakin wants to be that person, except better. Give Ben what he actually deserves.

And that’s when Anakin just can’t take it anymore. It’s too much for one man to handle. He isn’t to blame for breaking down.

“Will you marry me?” he asks, almost yells, at the back of Ben’s head.

At least a glass’s worth of red wine spills over the coffee table and floor and Ben’s pants. Ben curses, puts down the bottle, and then just stays where he is, on his knees in a puddle of red wine. “What?” 

Anakin sinks down in front of him, soaking the knees of his own jeans. At least some of the floor will be less wet. “Marry me,” he repeats, out of breath even though he has done nothing at all except lay his heart bare and give the only person he cares about on this earth the opportunity to break him with a single word.

“Do you even have a ring?” Ben asks. He seems too stunned to even notice that Anakin is dying of nerves.

“I do, so would you answer the question?” He fishes the small, rectangular box out of his pocket. “Please?”

“Oh my god,” Ben says, and there’s a long beat of silence as he seems unable to tear his eyes away from the small, unassuming ring box. 

It feels like an eternity. Anakin dies and comes back to life at least a dozen times because he still needs to know how this ends. 

When Ben looks back up, his eyes are wide and full of wonder, just like that first day they met. It settles something deep inside of Anakin, which is followed by an enormous wave of relief crashing down on him when Ben finally speaks again. “Yes! Obviously the answer is yes.”

Anakin laughs, a strangled sound, but he manages to blink away the tears before any fall. He flips open the lid of the box, and there are the two rings inside, plain gold. He takes one of them, deposits the box on the wine-free sofa and accepts Ben’s proffered hand. His own shakes as he slides the ring on Ben’s finger.

“No take backs,” he whispers, which is a little stupid and immediately makes him think Ben will want exactly that and will rescind his acceptance of Anakin’s proposal, but Ben doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest. He wastes no time in surging up into Anakin and framing Anakin’s face between his hands. Anakin kisses him back with joyous abandon, and he can feel the still cool ring on Ben’s finger pressed against his own cheek, and he has never felt more complete in his life.

-

It really is too good to be true, a voice in Anakin’s brain says, some days. His life has become so perfect it seems unreal. 

But then he invariably has a morning where he has to walk to work through the rain, or he feels miserable for a week because of a cold, or he just elbows Ben in the nose when he’s on top of him and trying to struggle out of his shirt for naked activities which are then promptly forgotten in favor of endless apologies. Something like that always happens and it makes him forget his pointless worries about how good his life is, because it clearly isn’t all that perfect and he probably has something better to worry about, anyway.

-

Still, the feeling keeps coming back.

-

It never leads anywhere, though. The one time he tries to tell Ben about it, Ben tries to reassure him it’s all okay and somewhere in the middle of it Anakin realizes he doesn’t actually want to talk about this, so he kisses Ben and that’s the end of that, with Ben appropriately distracted.

-

They get married in the fall in a very small ceremony. They’re each other’s best friends, they’re both only children and all four of their parents are deceased, so there’s no one who could be terribly insulted by their refusal to throw a big party. It’s all Anakin could have wished for, because there’s only one thing he really cares about, and that’s whether Ben will say yes.

He does. It makes Anakin dizzy, and for a moment he’s genuinely afraid he might pass out from happiness.

It rains when they leave the courthouse, but Ben is the kind of person to have checked the weather report for the day and brought an umbrella. In the end Anakin couldn’t give less of a shit if he gets his best pair of shoes wet, because it’s surprisingly nice to huddle together under Ben’s small umbrella. Or maybe it isn’t surprising at all – after all, any excuse to get close to Ben is a good one, and anything he does with Ben, even walking through puddles, is amazing. 

-

For their first anniversary, Ben buys him a bottle of hot sauce. Anakin laughs so hard he’s surprised he doesn’t crack a rib, and he infects Ben, so for at least twenty minutes they’re just two married fools gasping for air and desperately trying not to look at the bottle between them on the table, because it sets them off again every single time.

\- 

Anakin lives on a pink cloud, and it just keeps drifting higher and higher. Then one day, he falls down.

Literally.

When he comes to, the first thing he sees is Ben’s frightened face floating above him. He tries to sit up, because if something is scaring Ben, he needs to fix it, but it turns out he might be that thing when he realizes Ben has to help him get up. From the kitchen floor, because apparently that’s where he was.

Ben doesn’t let go of his arm even after Anakin is safely seated at the kitchen table. “Anakin, love, are you okay? What happened?”

“I don’t- I don’t know,” Anakin says, and even his voice sounds weak to his own ears. He clears his throat and shoots for something more normal. “I went to get a glass of water, and then I- Did I fall down?”

“It looks like you fainted,” Obi-Wan says, and he still sounds like his world is in the balance. It would be cute, if Anakin weren’t a little shaken himself. “I think you should see a doctor.”

“No, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Anakin says, almost reflexively. He’s never liked hospitals and growing up poor has ingrained a deep fear of the possibility of ridiculous medical bills in him. “It’s probably just low blood sugar. I skipped lunch.”

“Alright, if you think so.” Ben doesn’t sound happy about it, but he does accept it as plausible. Which it is, Anakin tells himself, even if he forgets about lunch pretty often and it’s never been a problem before.

Ben makes him a sandwich and they watch a movie, curled up on the couch. By the next day the scare is forgotten.

-

They adopt a cat when their second anniversary is coming up, and Anakin dubs it C3 because it’s the third cat they saw at the shelter. Ben protests that a number and letter code isn’t a real name. He tries to rename it Pio, after some Italian painter Anakin has never heard of, but it doesn’t really stick, so eventually Anakin starts calling it C3-Pio for the sake of compromise (and partly out of pity).

When they adopt a dog a few months later, Anakin suggests Ben should get to choose the name this time, out of fairness. The dog growl-barks twice at C3 before suddenly deciding cats are friends and walking up to her, wagging its tail, and Ben pronounces this is clearly an R2, because the dog said R two times. Anakin tacks on a D2 after a little googling, which allows him to stick to his own theme but still sound cool by referencing a mountain in the Philippines, a French tank, a type of steel and a whole bunch of ships and planes all at once, at least according to Wikipedia.

It’s always a little difficult to explain to guests why their pets have names like C3-Pio and R2D2, but at least there’s never any confusion at the dog park because the wrong Rover or Spotty responds to its name being called.

-

They’ve been married for two years, six months and three days, and Anakin is sitting comfortably on the couch looking at silly wedding day selfies that make his heart swell, when it happens again.

He’s alone when he comes to. A look at the clock tells him he was out of it for about five minutes, which isn’t enough time for Ben to have returned from his grocery run, and Anakin is glad for it. Ben doesn’t need to know about this. He would only worry.

-

It happens a couple more times after that. One time he’s at work and freaks out his colleagues, who have dragged the school nurse from across the street and are just about to dial 911 when Anakin regains consciousness. He has some difficulty talking them down from their plan to call anyway, but eventually he manages.

Then Ben storms in, because Anakin apparently didn’t wake up in time to avoid a call to him.

“Anakin! It happened again?”

Anakin is quiet for a moment too long, shocked because he thinks Ben found out about the times he didn’t tell him about, but ironically it’s exactly that guilty silence that clues Ben in.

“Wait a second, has this happened since that first time?”

“It…” Anakin still feels dizzy, but his head clears at the thought of having to explain any of this to Ben. “It has,” he finishes.

Ben looks quietly furious, and he might have a point there, but Anakin can still decide not to like it. He would have hidden how much this problem escalated for even longer if he could, because Ben doesn’t deserve to be dragged down with him. Ben deserves better.

Ben doesn’t let on much about whether he agrees or not. He drives Anakin to a doctor who can’t tell them anything very useful, but offers to run some tests on a blood sample. 

They don’t find anything, but the fainting spells also stop for a while, so everything seems fine.

-

Until it starts up again, that is.

He keeps having these dreams when he blacks out, unsettling but very realistic. He sometimes remembers flashes of a life he must have based on some sci-fi movie, because none of it could possibly be real. He imagines flashes of red and green light clashing and an all-encompassing power woven into the fabric of the universe and space ships and really, really terrible haircuts. The specifics never stick with him, melting away like snow dripping through his fingers as soon as he wakes, but it often leaves him mentally wobbly for a day or so.

-

They see a lot of doctors. Their faces blend together, and so does their professional concern.

The latest doctor keeps waffling during their fifth appointment. He uses a lot of words, but he says very little, and it all washes over Anakin like grey noise. He wrestles with his patience for a while, until he finally can’t take any more. “Just tell us how bad it is.”

He doesn’t look at Ben, who is in the other chair facing the doctor across his desk, but Ben squeezes his hand briefly. 

The doctor has fallen silent. He sighs and shuffles his papers, and that’s when Anakin knows. He _knows_. “Quite frankly? We are stumped, Mr. Skywalker.”

“What does that mean?” Ben asks. His tone is perfectly civil, but there’s something in it, something hurt and raw and defiant, that scares Anakin more than anything that’s happening to him. Ben should never have to sound that way.

The doctor leans forward and staples his fingers. He does look genuinely sorry, to his credit, despite the fact that he’s getting paid about double what regular good money would be for this. “I’m afraid it’s bad news. We’re unable to help Mr. Skywalker at this point.”

He doesn’t say outright that he thinks Anakin is going to die, but Anakin knows he and Ben both hear it. He knows because of the way Ben’s fingers crush his hand, and because of the fact that Ben never once stops talking about options and different doctors and alternative treatment all the way from the doctor’s office to their own front door, and because he hears Ben cry late at night, when he thinks Anakin is asleep. Anakin’s own eyes stay dry.

-

Every time Anakin faints, it takes longer for him to wake up, and he feels like he’s coming from further away. It also takes a toll on him in between episodes. The fainting and associated stress tire him out very easily, and Ben has been urging him to quit his job and focus on his health for months by the time he realizes that Ben is right, and it really is time to start focusing only on the things he cares about, because he probably doesn’t have much time left.

‘Things’ is the wrong word, really. It should be singular. There is only one thing he will truly regret leaving behind if he dies today – one person.

“Ben, promise me something.”

Ben turns over in the bed so they’re facing each other. He looks like he was almost asleep, and Anakin feels guilty for robbing him of what little rest he gets nowadays, because Anakin keeps him up enough already as it is, and more often than not, not in the fun way. 

“What?” Ben asks.

There are a lot of things Anakin could say. They’ve had endless discussions about some of those things. Anakin feels so bad for how miserable he makes Ben’s life, because he cares more about Ben than about himself, but Ben won’t allow him to cut himself off, even though Anakin thinks it would probably be better for Ben. Ben deserves so much more than a dying husband.

But, since they’ve been over that, he doesn’t try it again. He puts his hand to Ben’s cheek in the darkness of their room. “Promise me you won’t let me ruin your life. Don’t let me drag you down with me.”

“Anakin,” Ben says, and it sounds like all of Anakin’s wildest dreams and darkest fears rolled into one. Ben covers Anakin’s hand with his own, takes it and presses it against his own chest, where Anakin can feel his heart beat. It reminds him of that very first day, of that feeling that he’s found something essential, something he had never been aware of before, but he wouldn’t have been able to live without after.

“Promise me,” he whispers. His own heart is breaking in a million little ways, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about the one beneath his fingers.

“I promise,” Ben says. 

Anakin is not sure he believes him. He knows he would never have been able to pledge something like that if their situations has been reversed, but he’s selfish, and wants it from Ben anyway. He tries to kid himself into thinking this is a promise Ben can keep, because there’s no point to anything in any universe if he doesn’t.

-

Eventually, he faints and doesn’t wake up again.

Anakin dies at home, in bed, surrounded by Obi-Wan and their pets.

-

And then he wakes up, on a planet in a corner of the galaxy, gasping for breath but placed firmly back in reality. He remembers everything he just experienced, and he remembers in detail how true it felt, but he knows it was all a lie. He is immediately sure of this, and exactly nothing else. 

Then he sees Obi-Wan and is sure of two things.

“Anakin, thank the force, you’re awake,” Obi-Wan says, and it feels true. He must have slept.

It also feels impossible, because dreams aren’t like that. Dreams aren’t this hyper realistic, this expansive, this true. They aren’t this painful.

“What is happening?” he gasps, clutching at Obi-Wan’s arms when they reach out to him. He wants to fall into them, sink away in his embrace, but he has just enough sense to know that he can’t, not here, not with this Obi-Wan. He and Ben are two separate people.

But they are so similar, sweet force. Almost indistinguishable. It’s painful to keep his hands on Obi-Wan’s arms and his lips from Obi-Wan’s face, now that he has him back.

No – that’s wrong. He doesn’t have him back. He can’t, because none of what he remembers ever happened.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier,” this Obi-Wan says, with both his and Ben’s voice. Their voice, his voice, it’s all the same, except for how it’s not all. “They wouldn’t let me see you and locked me up when I kept insisting. You were out for an entire day.”

Obi-Wan says this as if it’s an eternity, but it throws Anakin for a loop. To him it wasn’t a day. It was a lifetime.

There is a figure in the corner of the room. As soon as Anakin sees him, he recognizes him as an inhabitant of this planet he and Obi-Wan half crash-landed on, and more of the story comes back to him. The people had been welcoming and helpful initially, but then Anakin had touched a stone he apparently shouldn’t have touched, and the next thing he knew, he was being sedated and carried off to this room, where he was told not to be afraid because they weren’t going to hurt him, but even guests had to pay for committing sacrilege. Someone – that guy, the guy in the corner with too many eyes – had come in and hypnotized him, and then he had sunk away and lived out an entire human life and now he is here, in a room that he remembers vaguely from a lifetime ago.

Obi-Wan follows his gaze and also looks at the stranger, and his eyes are uncharacteristically hard. “What did they do to you, Anakin? Did they torture you?”

“I was somewhere else,” Anakin says, because he doesn’t know how to begin to explain.

“He is not hurt,” the guy in the corner says. “Our punishments aren’t cruel. We did nothing but allow him to experience the things he wishes for most dearly. He dreamt of what he desires most in any possible universe, but it was all a harmless fantasy.”

A _fantasy_. The word reverberates in his brain, bounces around and echoes back like someone dropped a pebble in a cave. It’s a fitting thought, because he certainly feels hollow enough. 

“That’s true,” Anakin says. “They didn’t touch me.”

What he doesn’t say is that he would have preferred Obi-Wan’s imagined scenario of outright mistreatment and mutilation. He would have known how to handle that.

The stranger looks at him with all of his eyes. Anakin feels like he’s completely transparent. “You cut the journey short of your own free will,” the stranger says, sounding a little wondering. “It should have gone on for longer, but you felt you were too happy and broke through the trance. That’s never happened before.”

“This is all great, but I think we’d like to leave now,” Obi-Wan says. He’s still allowing Anakin to touch him and use him as a crutch, which is all Anakin really cares about. “You said you’d release our ship after Anakin woke up?”

-

“It’s just the force,” Anakin had said, upon arrival to the planet. There were rumors about its inhabitants and their strange magic. People on other planets feared them, but he’d been unimpressed. “We know the force. Nothing to be afraid of.” 

Not that Obi-Wan had seemed afraid, exactly. That was just Anakin exaggerating to heckle him a bit. Obi-Wan had merely looked apprehensive, but Anakin had still found him overly paranoid.

Anakin had been an idiot. At least one thing rung true for all possible realities.

-

Anakin lives a strange half-life during the first week after his involuntary trance. He and Obi-Wan continue their travels and he goes through the motions, but he can only look at Obi-Wan from a distance, while he is so used to touching him in so many small ways. 

His body is heavy with a deep melancholy. It reaches into the very core of his being and has taken something from him, but he can’t pinpoint what it is. It’s a directionless kind of longing. Hollow and awed but greedy, akin to the feeling of looking up at the stars and realizing you’re to the galaxy what a speck of dust dancing in the sunlight is to you, but still wrapped up in your own infinitesimal problems and concerns when you look down again. 

He’s still human and he’s still the same person he was one day ago in this timeline, but it doesn’t feel that way.

-

On the eighth day, they land on an uninhibited planet Anakin forgets the name of as soon as he sets foot on it. They find a cave to rest for the night. There’s been a full week of looking at Obi-Wan out of the corner of his eye and seeing the same man he loves, but not the same man who loves him back, and it’s so exhausting he crashes as soon as he’s horizontal, despite the fact that he’s literally sleeping on rocks.

When he wakes, he thinks for a moment that he’s still in his made-up reality. He feels drained and starved for air and as if he’s come from somewhere very, very far, like he’s just broken the surface of the ocean, but had to swim up from the very bottom to get there. There’s something wet and salty on his face. It takes him a moment to realize it isn’t seawater.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, so softly it hurts. Obi-Wan is sitting next to him, keeping watch by the low light of their campfire, and the glow of it on his familiar face hurts, too. “Are you crying?”

And Anakin is, and he hates it, because he never did in his dream life, not a single time. He was dying there, and he was still stronger than he is now. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to be this vulnerable, and he doesn’t want all of these memories that only exist in his own head, and he doesn’t want his emotions towards his mentor and best friend to be this tangled up and based on someone who never existed but who he still _lost_. It’s fucked up. Everything is fucked up.

Obi-Wan tries to hand him a handkerchief, and that’s what finally breaks Anakin’s heart. It’s such a sweet, innocent, caring gesture. It’s everything Anakin could ever want but not enough, it’s not the right kind of sweet or caring and it shouldn’t _be_ innocent, and it stings like nothing ever has.

So Anakin scrambles up and kisses Obi-Wan. It’s not sweet, but salty, and he crashes into Obi-Wan in a way that’s more careless than caring, despite how much he cares, because oh, it sometimes feels like there’s no shore to his sea of feelings. There is nothing innocent about the way he thrusts his tongue into Obi-Wan’s mouth.

But Obi-Wan doesn’t react. He seems to just let it wash over him, which knocks all of the fight out of Anakin at once, when he notices. He backs off and twists away and puts his hands over the back of his head, his face buried in his own arms. 

“Oh God,” he says, and then he realizes it’s something Ben would say, but Obi-Wan probably doesn’t understand. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

A hand drags one of his elbows down, gently, and then the other. Anakin’s eyes are still closed, until something touches his face, drying the ugly wet tracks down his cheeks towards his chin. It’s the tissue from earlier, which Anakin only sees because he accidentally opens his eyes somewhere along the way.

Obi-Wan is very close.

“Anakin,” he says again, now sounding lost. “What’s happened to you?”

So Anakin tells him.

-

“Alright,” Obi-Wan says, when Anakin is finally done divulging all the sordid details of the lies his unconscious had spun for him. “I understand.”

“You do?” Anakin asks, because he doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, but this calm acceptance isn’t it.

“I do. It’s fine, Anakin. You’ll be alright, I’m sure of it.”

Obi-Wan smiles at him, and somehow, impossibly, that’s all. Anakin pretends to go back to sleep and Obi-Wan returns to his watch and their conversation is over, and Anakin is incredibly confused, because he doesn’t feel like it is.

-

Everything is worse after that. Anakin bared his heart, and because this is real life and not something happening inside his own head, Obi-Wan acts like nothing has changed. He doesn’t even seem to pick up on the awkwardness Anakin feels between them every moment of every day now.

It gets so bad, Anakin sees no other options anymore – he needs to put a stop to this, before he breaks down again, but completely this time.

“Listen,” he says, one day just after lunch in their shared room at an inn. They’re sitting on their two separate beds, positioned in opposite corners of the small, rectangular room. It’s a metaphor for Anakin’s life: Obi-Wan is so close he can see him constantly, but still miles away. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and maybe we should part ways. I could… find another Jedi Master, and you would be much more efficient without me following you around.”

Obi-Wan looks absolutely floored. “What? Why? What brought this on?”

Anakin can’t look at him directly, so he looks at the wall behind him. “This must be really weird for you.”

“Why?”

“Because you know-” Anakin has to pause to draw a breath midway through his sentence. He can’t believe Obi-Wan would be so cruel as to make him say this out loud. As if it weren’t painful enough already. “You know the thing I desire most in any universe.”

“Anakin, what you wanted most was a normal, safe life. There is nothing wrong with that.”

Anakin continues staring at the wall for a bit, replaying those words in his mind. There is something wrong with them.

In the end, he can’t avoid looking at Obi-Wan any longer.

“What?” he says, flat.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting some peace and stability, or even wanting a family. Did you think I follow the Jedi Code so strictly I would think differently about you for this?”

Anakin’s heart isn’t just in his throat, it’s in every single vein of his body, beating so loudly it almost deafens him. “I wanted _you_. What I desired most was _you_.”

Obi-Wan’s disbelief plays out in slow-motion – his eyes widening, his mouth going slack – but is still over in a flash. He just looks confused and a little hurt after that. “Why would you say that?”

“Because it’s true.” Anakin can feel his throat close up, but he’s not going to cry this time. He refuses. He slides off the edge of his bed and falls to his knees, because it’s the quickest way to reach Obi-Wan’s hands, and he needs to touch him, he has to. “My mind knew that other reality was fake because I was too happy there, because you loved me. That’s why I need to get away from you now. I can’t take this.”

Obi-Wan slides back into disbelief. It seems like an eternity until he speaks. “I won’t let you go.”

Anakin has no words left. He heaves a sob, but it’s dry.

“No.” Obi-Wan looks frantic, now, almost scared. He pulls his hands from Anakin’s. Anakin lets him go. It feels final, symbolic – until Obi-Wan puts his hands right back on Anakin, but on his face, this time. There is no ring to press against his cheek in this reality, but all the rest of it feels familiar.

Obi-Wan kneels down as well, and it’s awkward and their knees bump, because there isn’t enough space between the two beds. They’re bridging it, filling what little room there was entirely. 

“Anakin.” Obi-Wan is so close now that Anakin can feel his breath. “Anakin, I can’t believe- Did you never _see_ -” Obi-Wan, usually so cool and collected and eloquent, sighs in frustration.

And then he leans in and kisses Anakin. It’s nothing much; just two pairs of lips pressed together. It is sweet, this time, and soft, and it hits Anakin like an avalanche, swallowing him and everything he is whole. 

He pulls back to see Obi-Wan and there’s that look, the look Ben had when they met, and when he proposed, except this time it’s on Obi-Wan and it’s real and it’s _there_ , in his eyes. Anakin can feel the familiar beat, as well – the humming, the thrum, the essence of all life, the _force_. This time he recognizes it for what it is. It binds him to Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan to him in a way that makes every fear he ever had seem silly.

Except they weren’t. They’re what convinces him now that he isn’t dreaming, not anymore and not again. This, what they hold in their hands here, is fragile and wonderful but it’s too painful and hard-won to be perfect. It hurts.

It’s real.

“I won’t let you go,” Obi-Wan repeats, like a mantra. “I’m here, no matter what.”

The last part echoes towards Anakin from two different universes and two different versions of Obi-Wan. It still sounds like danger of a kind Anakin would gladly give his life for. It still sounds like _I love you._

And if there’s any constant to the universe, it’s this: he’s with Obi-Wan, which means he’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Check out DonkerRood if you like this pairing, because she's rad and 100% of the reason this exists.


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